What’s the Best Hearing Aid Battery?
Posted by on April 20, 2009
An essential component of a hearing aid is the hearing aid batteries. Without power from the battery, the whole device is essentially useless. They’re so essential that many individuals who have a hearing aid will also buy a hearing aid battery tester. That way they can tell when the battery is beginning to run out of power. Then they can be prepared with spare batteries when it needs to be replaced.
The life span of hearing aid batteries will depend on what kind of device you’re using. The batteries for those small hearing aids that go inside the ear canal don’t last as long. The reason is that these are smaller batteries and don’t have as much of the power producing components.
The older, more traditional kind of hearing aids utilized mercury batteries to keep them going. But there are newer zinc batteries that are much more effective and therefore more commonly used.
Zinc batteries utilize zinc air. This is a mixture of oxygen in the air along with the zinc present inside the battery. The resulting reaction gives power to the battery. They last approximately twice as long as the old mercury batteries.
You’ll find that zinc hearing aid batteries have a color coded tab. One purpose for this is to be able to tell what size the battery is. However, it also prevents air from entering the battery until you’re ready to start using it.
Once the tab is removed, the oxygen in the air is allowed into the battery. The battery will activate once the zinc and oxygen combine. So it’s important that you don’t pull off the tab before you need to start using the battery. You don’t want it to start losing life before it’s even in use.
There are four common sizes of hearing aid batteries on the market today. There’s a specific size of battery for every type of hearing aid out there. A number 10 battery with a yellow color code is the smallest you can purchase. The blue labels indicate the largest size available, which is 675. Hearing aids that fit inside the ear canal typically use the smaller sizes. The behind the ear devices will use the larger sized batteries.
The bigger sizes can contain a greater amount of zinc inside them, and therefore last longer. However, they are a lot more bulky. For some people, it’s more important that their hearing aid is discreet than it is to change the battery less frequently.
